Welcome to the Hog Blog, a blog chronicling minor-league baseball in the Lehigh Valley. Tom Housenick, The Morning Call's IronPigs beat writer, has been at The Morning Call since 2008. In a previous lifetime, he was at Lackawanna County Stadium in Moosic talking with future Phillies Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell, Shane Victorino and Ryan Howard, among many others.
He’ll now be spending his summers in search of who the Phillies are hoping to be the next Chase Utley and Cole Hamels plus any outfielder who catch and hit. What he really hopes to find are the next Mariano Rivera, Todd Helton and Jim Thome --- great human beings who happened to be great at this sport.
He spent the last five years covering Colonial League football, college basketball and high school track & field.

It's 6:20 at Coca-Cola Park and they just pulled the tarp, so they'll be playing baseball soon here -- game time 7 p.m.

J.A. Happ will get the start for the IronPigs, his first in two weeks. He's pitched just over four innings in the last 2 1/2 weeks, so it'll be interesting to see whether he's retained the sharpness that earned him his latest promotion to the Phillies.

IronPigs manager Dave Huppert isn't concerned about the affect the layoff will have on Happ. "I'd be worried if it was early in the season but he's got a lot of innings in already, and I'm sure he threw regular in the bullpen down there," he said.

Happ's opponent is David Huff, a sandwich pick in 2006 who reached Triple-A in a little over two years in the Cleveland organization.

By the way, this figures to be the final season for the Indians in Buffalo. It's pretty much an open secret that Cleveland will align with Columbus next year when the Clippers unveil their new downtown ballpark, in part to help the Indians gain a foothold in central Ohio where the Reds have traditionally been the dominant major league team.

Buffalo will likely hook up with either Toronto or the New York Mets, who would love to return from their exile to New Orleans and get back in the International League.